1. Description of the Prior Art
A commonly used type of electrical connector comprises an insulating housing having a plurality of terminal receiving cavities extending therethrough from the rearward face to the mating face. Terminals crimped onto the ends of wires are assembled to the housing by simply inserting each terminal into one of the cavities until a retaining lance on the terminal moves beyond a shoulder on the housing so that the terminal cannot be withdrawn from the connector housing.
Problems are sometimes encountered with connectors of the type described above in that the technician may fail to insert the terminal fully into the cavity in the housing so that the lance on the terminal does not move beyond the shoulder in the housing. The terminal may appear to be fully inserted and may appear to resist withdrawal, particularly, if the terminal is dimensioned such that it has a close fit in the cavity of the housing or if the insulation on the wire to which the terminal is crimped has a close fit in the housing cavity. The result is that when the connector is placed in service, that is, when it is mated with its complementary connector, the improperly inserted terminal will be pushed rearwardly from the housing and will not establish contact with a complementary terminal in the complementary connector. This problem can be partially overcome by good quality controls and careful inspection of the assembled connectors prior to their being placed in service. However, the possibility of improper insertion of the terminals into the housing cannot be completely eliminated.
Another problem which sometimes arises with connectors of the type described above results from the fact that under some circumstances, it is required that the wires to which the terminals are crimped be contained in a cable having a jacket thereon. The jacket must be removed from an end portion of the cable so that the individual wires can be spread apart and inserted into the cavities of the connector housing. It is desirable, however, to remove only a minimum amount of the cable jacket so that it will extend to a location close to the connector. The technician faced with the task of inserting the terminals on the wires into the cavities in the connector will have only a very short length of wire between the terminal and the end of the jacket to work with when the terminals are inserted. The operation of inserting the terminals into the cavity is sometimes time consuming for the reason that the technician has only a short length of flexible wire to manipulate, particularly if the wire is of a relatively heavy gauge and is relatively stiff, for example, conductors in the range of 10-12 AWG for power useage. If the cable has six or more wires therein, insertion of the first and second terminals may be accomplished with relative ease, but the insertion operation becomes increasingly awkward and difficult as the remaining terminals are inserted into the cavities for the reason that the cable is held in a fixed position by the previously inserted terminals and cannot, therefore, be manipulated by the technician in inserting the remaining terminals.
The present invention is directed to the achievement of a multi-contact electrical connector and a connector assembly having structural features which simplify the step of inserting terminals into the cavities in the connector housing and which obviate the problems discussed above.